Director compensation has become a fashionable topic: Cross-nationally, the earnings of executives and non-executive directors have risen significantly in recent years. Academic literature offers two hypotheses for this trend, a "fat cat" and an "optimal-contract" explanation. Proponents of the...

Abstract: Der weltweite Anstieg der Gehälter für angestellte Manager wird kontrovers diskutiert. Auf der einen Seite argumentieren Vertreter "optimaler Verträge", dass der Anstieg der Gehälter durch funktionierende Märkte verursacht ist. Aus dieser Sicht erhöhen die Internationalisierung...

The most influential theory of corporate governance, principal agency theory, does not take into consideration that the key task of modern corporations is to generate and transfer firm-specific knowledge. It proposes that, in order to overcome the widespread corporate scandals, the interests of...

The financial crisis is a crisis of governance as well. In search of answers and solutions many scholars and practitioners recommend improved output control, i.e. better external incentives or even stricter regulations. Monasteries demonstrate that alternative models may be more suitable to...